6 Essential Lean Manufacturing Podcasts

You may have read our blog on the best science podcasts that can boost your science knowledge, where we presented a mix of funny, educational and quirky science podcasts.

Today’s post is based around another part of the core of our business; manufacturing. We adopt a lean culture at ReAgent so we can always improve the way we do things – this leads to the reduction of wasted time and financial costs and means our service is always as good as it can be.

Whether you’re new to lean manufacturing or would just like to gain a deeper understanding, we picked out the most appropriate episodes of some of the best lean manufacturing podcasts. The podcasts are listed here for lean tips and documents of personal lean experiences from experts.

1. Value Stream Mapping

Today’s Lean Manufacturing is a website dedicated to producing weekly interviews with authors and thought leaders around America, in order to build a lean manufacturing podcast. Although podcasts are not actually this regular, I found a worthwhile and informative episode.

This episode is an interview with Karen Martins who provides information and solutions for manufacturing organisations by speaking about Value Stream Mapping.

Value Stream Mapping is a lean management method for analysing the current state of a manufacturing facility and designing a future state. It’s carried out with the purpose of improving layout and productivity and is a method that was used by ReAgent to plan our factory re-fit.

2. “Lean, Mean and Made to Order”

The Fabricator is a networking place for those in the metal-forming and manufacturing industry with articles and lean manufacturing podcasts.

“Lean, Mean and Made to Order” features a speaker, Tim Horton, who talks about a made-to-order vehicle manufacturer that changed their assembly procedures.

The company adapted a lean assembly line concept to make sure everything they do would be quicker and more accurate. They did this by assessing current processes and examining

what could be improved.

Engage employees in Kaizen so they can let you know about areas that could be improved

3. Engaging Employees in Kaizen

Lean Blog is a blogging site that was set up in 2005 to host news and discussion about lean. The blog began with a focus on lean management in the manufacturing world, but has evolved to focus on lean in healthcare.

In this episode, George Friesen, a Lean Manufacturing Consultant gives his view.

George discusses what’s vital in a lean transformation and gives tips on how to engage employees in kaizen. Kaizen should involve employees at all levels, so they’re invited to input their ideas on the areas a company can adopt lean. For this reason, it’s important that employees understand the benefits of kaizen.

4. The Lean CEO

The following episode is from Stitcher, which isn’t necessarily a manufacturing blog. Stitcher streams news and entertainment, and features over25,000 radio shows and podcasts.

Jacob travelled around the world and interviewed CEO’s from 28 different countries, to get a sufficient number of viewpoints for his book. As well as insight into what the CEO’s thought about lean, the podcast discusses kaizen culture and Jacob’s own productivity habit.

5. Lean and Six Sigma

Manufacturing.net is a popular source for manufacturing and product development news, which has regular news updates and articles.

The podcast speaker is Ankit Patel, Managing Director with The Lean Way Consulting. Ankit gives insight into positively improving processes by looking at lean and Six Sigma. Six Sigma is a set of techniques and tools to improve processes.

6. Beliefs that make Lean Succeed

The final episode from our collection of lean manufacturing podcasts comes from St Louis Community College. It is part of the 21st Century Professional Development series presented by the Centre for Business, Industry and Labour at St Louis Community College.

Part of this recording expresses that there are two basic beliefs that make lean succeed in the workplace. The podcast states that over 65% of attempts at implementing lean manufacturing fail. This episode provides the key beliefs that lean depends upon.

Hopefully this list of podcasts has been useful. We have just picked out key lean episodes but there are other manufacturing topics covered within the podcasts.

Let us know if there are any more lean manufacturing podcasts that you would like to share with others in the manufacturing industry.

Posted by: Amy Hawthorne

After graduating from Lancaster University in 2013, Amy joined ReAgent in early 2014 as a Marketing Assistant. She is responsible for creating regular blogs and managing ReAgent's social media accounts, as well as producing video content as part of our online marketing plan. Read more posts by Amy »